People who are injured, ill, aged, or in some way disabled often have difficulty changing position, particularly in moving between sitting and standing positions or from one surface to another. An individual's capabilities may change from hour to hour in response to pain, medication, medical precautions and contraindications, the acuteness of the person's condition, the person's emotional state and many other factors. A caregiver must therefore act cautiously each time a patient is moved, protecting both the patient and the caregiver. The caregiver should be able to closely monitor the patient's movement, provide verbal guidance, assist when needed, and intervene to prevent injury.
One way to provide this level of support is to strap the patient into an apparatus capable of independently lifting and supporting the patient's entire weight. The patient may then be raised to or lowered from a standing position, or swung or rolled into a new sitting position. Such devices often incorporate a large metal frame with hydraulic actuators. These may provide excellent control over the patient's position while minimizing exertion by the caregiver, but they are expensive, require considerable operating space, are difficult to move and time-consuming to set up. Busy caregivers who assist many patients seldom have time to struggle with large, complex lifting devices, especially when care requires travel between patients.
Many lighter and simpler lifting devices have been developed, ranging from pivoting posts mounted on platforms to straps that may be attached to a patient to give a caregiver a better grip on the patient. Though more portable than a hydraulic lift, a post mounted on a platform is still awkward to move about and may require more upper body strength than a patient can reliably muster. A simple strap or a strap with an attached grip is easy to transport and attach but forces the caregiver to provide most or all lifting and stabilization force.
Without the help of a device that provides stability and a mechanical advantage, a caregiver who lifts and assists patients must engage in strenuous motions in awkward, unbalanced positions and may suffer consequent work-related injuries, especially when these activities are repeated many times within a short period. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a caregiver who assists a patient who is standing up, sitting down, or transferring laterally to another place is at risk for work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) such as back injuries, which account for one-third of all occupational injuries and illnesses reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by employers every year. These are common, expensive and preventable injuries.
What is needed is a light, portable, inexpensive device that addresses OSHA concerns by decreasing the force a caregiver must use to move a patient and by eliminating the awkward postures required by other methods; that provides constant, direct contact between caregiver and patient, allowing the caregiver to control the patient and his/her movement and ensure a constant level of safety at any given time; and that is sufficiently easy to use, light, portable, and inexpensive that it can be routinely employed.